Need Telephone Show Cards for Your In-Person Survey Due to a Pandemic-Induced Multimode Data Collection Shift? PATH Study Lessons Learned 2020 to Present…

• Activity Number: 71 - COVID-19 and Survey Research Methods
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 7, 2022 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Victoria Castleman and Sarah Dipko*
• Companies: Westat and Westat
• Keywords: COVID-19; Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI); Show cards; Instrument design; Multimode surveys

Abstract

The Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study is a nationally-representative longitudinal study which has interviewed respondents in-person since its inception in 2012. The study selects youth and adults for annual or biennial audio computer-assisted self-interviews (ACASI). These interviews contain a large volume of questions, many of which include on-screen images to illustrate a variety of tobacco products. Parent CAPI interviews also use on-screen images to provide response option lists for sensitive questions. In-person operations were suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Work began immediately to transition to telephone administration. Show cards were developed to support telephone respondents through the new interviewer-administered response process, including creation of a nimble, flexible web design. The PATH Study was able to resume data collection via telephone administration in July 2020. This paper reviews the issues and decisions involved in the initial creation of the PATH Study show cards, highlights how the instrument flow informed the web design, and notes the improvements made for subsequent rounds of the study.